The Fresh Market, a major U.S. retail chain, recently joined the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) Fair Food Program, adding another victory in the battle for humane working conditions for tomato pickers in Florida’s $650 million industry. Thirteen companies including Burger King, McDonald's and Walmart have signed up so far.

CIW is a worker-based human rights organization that was started by a small group of workers in 1993 in Immokalee; an impoverished town in Florida, that lies 30 miles east of the tomato fields. The town rose to national prominence when farmworkers mobilized community-wide stoppages and boycotts of major fast-food companies to stop declining wages, forced labor, sexual harassment and other abusive practices in the industry.

“When I first visited Immokalee, I heard appalling stories of abuse and modern slavery,” Susan Marquis, dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, told the New York Times. “But now the tomato fields in Immokalee are probably the best working environment in American agriculture. In the past three years, they’ve gone from being the worst to the best.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) “Profile of Hired Farmworkers” states that farmworkers remain among the “most economically disadvantaged working groups in the U.S.” The profile cites the acute and structural dangers facing farmworkers including: strenuous physical labor, pesticide exposure, inadequate sanitary facilities and substandard housing. The tomato fields, the USDA confirmed, were also a breeding ground for involuntary servitude and sexual harassment.

In 2011, CIW launched the Fair Food Program as a partnership between farmworkers, Florida tomato growers and participating retail buyers. Participating buyers are required to commit to buying Florida tomatoes only from growers in good standing with the Fair Food Program and cease purchases from any growers who have failed to comply with the code of conduct.

“The Florida agricultural industry has been mired with a history of grave human rights abuses and farmworker exploitation since its inception,” said Oscar Otzoy, a CIW member, told Global Research in Canada. “We created the CIW not to address individuals on a case-by-case basis, but to completely transform the agricultural industry as a whole.”

The Fair Food Program also organizes worker-to-worker sessions training with the Know Your Rights and Responsibilities booklet, a 24-hour complaint hotline, a health and safety committee with workers’ representatives on every farm to check up working conditions like mandated rest breaks, provision of drinking water and zero tolerance for forced labor and sexual harassment.

“I’ll be able to be a voice for the other workers…For me the most important thing is respect. Now it feels calmer and better at work,” two anonymous members of the CIW told the National Farm Worker Ministry.